Henry Wilfred "Bunny" Austin, the most admirable failure in the history of British tennis, has died on his 94th birthday. Though in age he had hoped that Tim Henman might replace him, he still remained the last male British competitor to reach the finals at Wimbledon. Fred Perry won (for the third year running) in 1936; Austin lost in 1932 and 1938. At least he got there, and twice. He was also the man who introduced shorts to the game.

Austin enjoyed an idyllic middle-class childhood before the first world war. He lived with his parents and sister Phyllis in a large house with servants in South Norwood. He was nicknamed Bunny after a rabbit in a comic-strip called Wilfred. So keen was his father (whose own nickname was Wolf), that his son should become a sportsman that he seized the newborn infant from the doctor to check that his limbs were sound. Bunny accommodated these expectations at the earliest possible moment: he practised hitting tennis balls against his nursery wall, and joined Norhurst Tennis Club at the age of six.

At Repton School, he played for the cricket team, but tennis was his passion, and in 1921 he won the under-16 singles in the public schoolboys' tournament at Queen's. The following year he won the junior championships in the singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and in 1923 again won singles and doubles in the public schoolboys' tournament.

He had similar successes in 1924 and 1925: he representing England against America at Eastbourne, winning the Cambridge university singles, and reaching the men's doubles semi-finals in his first year at Wimbledon in 1926, all while still an undergraduate. Altogether, Austin reached the Wimbledon quarter- finals, or beyond, 10 times. Unseeded in 1929, he reached the semi-finals, losing to Jean Borotra of France. He was ranked ninth in the world by the year's end, and was seeded sixth at Wimbledon for the following three years.

In 1932, Austin, aged 25, dropped just three sets en route to his first finals - he was the first Englishman to reach them for a decade - only to be overwhelmed by the American Ellsworth Vines in three sets. Sixty-six years later, as a generous-minded and gracious nonagenarian, he recalled this defeat for the Guardian's Frank Keating in the nursing-home where he spent his last years: "Ellsworth wiped me off the court in 50 minutes. I was annihilated. It was 6-4, 6-2, 6-0 and he won the match with an ace."

Austin bounced back in 1933, was seeded fourth and reached the quarter-final, going out to Japan's Jiro Satoh. As Austin recalled: "It was the year I invented shorts. I found sweat-sodden cricket flannels were weighing me down, so my tailor ran up some prototype shorts." He also had his revenge on Vines, beating him 6-1, 6-1, 6-4 in Paris in the Davis Cup zone final. He and Fred Perry were national heroes, carried shoulder-high by cheering crowds on their return to Victoria Station.

Austin was used to such celebrity. In 1931 he had married actress Phyllis Konstam. She is now remembered only by a few avid Hitchcock film buffs, for roles in his 1928 silent comedy Champagne, his early, stodgy British talkie The Skin Game and his 1930 film, Murder. At the time, Konstam was feted and beautiful, Austin was a pin-up, and theirs was a celebrity wedding of 1931. They had met on a Cunard liner two years earlier as Austin was heading for the US Open at Forest Hills (in which he reached the last eight).

This gilded couple knew a galaxy of famous people; Bunny was a friend of Daphne du Maurier, Ronald Coleman and Michael, King of Romania, and he played tennis socially with Charlie Chaplin and the Queen of Thailand. (He found himself shouting "Run, your Majesty, run!" when they played doubles.) He met Queen Mary and President Roosevelt, and the future President Kennedy told him he had been a fan. The tennis ace Suzanne Lenglen insisted he play doubles with her.

At Wimbledon, Bunny's mixed doubles partners were Betty Nuthall and Joan Lycett, and, in 1934, Dorothy Shepherd Barron, with whom he reached the finals (a 0-6 third set defeat). In the men's doubles he never played again after his second round defeat of 1931, partnered by Charles Kingsley.

In the singles, however, he reached the quarter-finals year after year, peaking in 1935 with a respectable four-set defeat by Donald Budge, one of the game's all-time greats. It would be the longest Wimbledon singles match Budge ever played. That year, Austin was a semi-finalist in the French Championship and defeated Budge and Allison in the challenge round of the Davis Cup, which he and Perry were instrumental in retaining for Britain.

Seeded seventh, Bunny reached the semi-finals once again in 1936, going out to the German von Cramm, and the following year, now the British No 1, he repeated this result against the same opponent. He also reached the finals of the French.

In 1938 he met Budge again, this time in the Wimbledon final. He won only four games. "Donald was unstoppable that afternoon," Austin remembered half a century on - adding, characteristically: "He was a true great. It was an honour just to be on the same court." The following year was Austin's last as a Wimbledon competitor. Seeded No 1, he went out to the American sixth seed Elwood Cooke in straight sets, after beating future champion (and future Briton) Jaroslav Drobny in round three.

It was not the end of the story. Despite their celebrity and famous friends, Bunny and Phyllis had been drawn toward the Oxford Group and Moral Rearmament, and worked for this cause from the early 1930s; during the war, they went to America to promote it. Peter Ustinov, who knew Austin, wrote that he was "disgracefully ostracised by the All-England Club because he was a conscientious objector". Austin had been a Club member since 1925, yet on his return to Britain in 1961, he was told his membership had "been lapsed". They restored it when he was 77 years old; Austin noted: "In 1984, 40 years after getting rid of me, they suddenly let me back in and [were] all very nice to me."

Austin, whose autobiography A Mixed Double was published in 1969, and his wife devoted the rest of their lives to Moral Rearmament, travelling the world to promote the cause. They were particularly involved in the MRA's Westminster Theatre, where a production about their life, Love All, was staged.

Phyllis died in 1976. In 1995, Austin had a serious fall, and entered a nursing home at Coulsdon, Surrey, where he remained, sociable, alert, unembittered and interested in life and in tennis. He is survived by a daughter, Jennifer, and son, John.